This invention relates to a gas turbine rotor comprising a disk and turbine rotor blades held in transverse slots provided at the disk periphery, these rotor blades including an airfoil, a blade platform and a blade root fixed in the respective transverse slot, with the airfoils having cavities flown by cooling air, and with either of the opposite side faces of the blade platforms being provided with a recess accommodating a sealing and damping element bridging the gap between the blade platforms.
Gas turbine rotors of the type described above are known from Specification U.S. Pat. No. 6,561,764 B1, for example. The sealing and damping elements arranged between the side faces of the blade platforms are intended to minimize the ventilation losses and to reduce the vibrations of the turbine rotor blades. With regard to the sealing and damping elements, these gas turbine rotors are disadvantageous in that a single, mechanical seal is not fully effective and will permit hot gas to pass via the gap remaining between the blade platforms into the area beneath the blade platforms and, thus, into the area of fixation of the turbine rotor blades on the disk periphery. This results in a reduction of service life of the rotor disk. Provision of additional mechanical sealing elements between the blade platforms in areas in which the sealing and damping element is not effective requires, however, considerable manufacturing effort and, in addition, may result in stresses.